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Police say the nation's capital recorded 143 slayings in 2009, the fewest since 1966. Police had hoped to achieve the lowest total since 1964, when there were 132, but there were three slayings on New Year's Eve.

DULLES TOLL ROAD GETS MORE EXPENSIVE
Starting Friday, drivers will pay more to use the Dulles Toll Road, with toll rates increasing 25 cents, to $1 at the main plaza and to 75 cents at ramps.

The increase is the first in a series that will double charges by 2012. In November, the board of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which operates the toll road, approved the new rates. The board also approved two additional increases at the main plaza, for 2011 and 2012, which will raise the toll charge to $1.50. (Washington Post)

DUBAI TO OPEN WORLD'S TALLEST BUILDING
Once-bustling Dubai will open the world's tallest skyscraper on Monday, boasting new limits in design and construction, hopeful of polishing an image tarnished by the debt woes afflicting the Gulf emirate.

Emaar, the giant property firm part-owned by the government and which developed the needle-shaped concrete, steel and glass structure, has declined to reveal Burj Dubai's exact height.

Apparently wanting to maintain the suspense, the company will say only that the tower exceeds 800 metres (2,640 feet), putting it far higher than Taiwan's Taipei 101 tower (508 metres). (Breitbart.com)

STRANGE NAMES, INDEED.
When Shakespeare asked, “What’s in a name?” he didn’t live in a world where pop stars call their babies Bronx Mowgli and students sit outside a college counselor’s office underneath a sign that reads: “If You’re Waiting for Marijuana, Sit Here.”

Celebrities giving their offspring names that they call creative and others call bizarre is nothing new, as Moon Unit and Dweezil Zappa could tell you. So when singer Ashlee Simpson-Wentz and rocker Pete Wentz had a son in November 2008 and named the tyke Bronx Mowgli, it wasn’t that surprising. (MSNBC)